The research vessel Akademik Shokalskiy has been trapped for nearly a week with 74 scientists, tourists and crew.

The ship is stocked with food and is in no danger, the team on board says.

The planned air evacuation requiredthat the two icebreakers in the immediate area - the Xue Long and the Australian Aurora Australis
- be positioned close to each other in open water,clear of the pack
ice.

However, the captain of the Xue Long has told the Shokalskiy that he is keeping his vessel in a "holding position".

The Aurora Australis, is now understood to be planning to carve through the dense thick pack to assist the Xue Long.

The initial plan had been for a helicopter from the Xue Long to carry
people in groups of 15 up from the pack ice next to the Shokalskiy.

The airlifted passengers would then be transferred by a small
boat, deployed from the Australian icebreaker, onto the Aurora
Australis.

The expedition members would then have travelled to Australia's Antarctic base at Casey some four days' voyage away.

Under the initial plan, the remaining crew members would have
stayed on board until another, more powerful US icebreaker arrived in
up to 10 days' time,the BBC's Andrew Luck-Baker reports from on board
the Akademik Shokalskiy.However, it may now be that all of those on board may have to waitfor the US icebreaker, the Polar Star, he adds.

Earlier attempts by Chinese and French icebreakers to reach the ship were also foiled by the thick ice.. The Shokalskiy was trapped on Christmas Eve by thick sheets
of ice, driven by strong winds, about 1,500 nautical miles south of
Hobart - the capital of the Australian state of Tasmania."

There is no fixed timeline for the next
steps, said Turney, while the captains of the Shokalskiy, Aurora
Australis and the Xue Long waited for good weather. The forecast for the
next few days, however, looks like there will be more of the same:
snow, wind and heavy cloud.

"It's remarkable just how much change there's been," said
Turney. "The ice that's packed around us is many years old, some is more
than 10 years old."

The multi-year sea ice surrounding the
Shokalskiy is much thicker and stronger than the new, first-year sea ice
because it has had years of snowfall on top and freezing underneath.

According to the satellite maps, this ice was on the east side of the
Mertz glacier until this past week, stuck fast to the land. Possibly
because of a storm, or some other weather factor, this "fast ice" broke
off and was blown into the area in which the Shokalskiy was sailing.
Multi-year ice is a lot more difficult to cut through than single-year
ice, which was the sort of material the Shokalskiy came through on its
way into Antarctica....

The
fast ice was partly in the area because of the huge iceberg, B09B. This
broke away from the Antarctic continent in 2010, collided with and
snapped off the extended part of the Mertz glacier, and then grounded
itself in the entrance to Commonwealth Bay. Since then, the sea ice that
would normally have formed and blown out to seahas instead been
blocked by B09B and frozen into place. Given the recent
reorganisation of the ice around the Mertz glacier, glaciologists aboard
the Shokalskiy think the ship might have become inadvertently caught in
the formation of a new area of fast ice, which could stay in place for
several years.

"Professor Chris Turneyfrom the University of NSW is mounting the
largest Australian science expeditions to the Antarctic with an
85-person team to try to answer questions about how climate change in
the frozen continent might be already shifting weather patterns in
Australia....

MARGOT O'NEILL, REPORTER: Here in hot, dusty Queensland, scientist Chris
Turney is training for the icy desolation of Antarctica. He and his
team must learn how to drive this all-terrain vehicle, because if sea
ice collapses under them, this vehicle will float.CHRIS TURNEY,
CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH CENTRE, UNSW: So we've got to cross this sea ice
of 60 kilometres to try to get into the windiest place in the world.

MARGOT
O'NEILL: It'll be one of the largest Australian science expeditions to
Antarctica, covering nearly 10,000 kilometres, with an 85-person team,
including 60 scientists from marine biologists to meteorologists to ice
core specialists....The research stakes are
high. Antarctica is one of the great engines driving the world's oceans,
winds and weather, especially in Australia.But there's ominous signs
of climate change.

CHRIS TURNEY:So the result is
that during the wintertime when we see this delivery of moisture into
Australia - southern Australia, New Zealand, that's going to become less
and less common. That's the implication of our observation.

MARGOT
O'NEILL: Just what else it could mean for Australia is an urgent
priority for the scientists. In one of the most extreme environments on
the planet, they'll collect thousands of measurements and samples.

CHRIS
TURNEY: There's so much out there that we just don't understand and you
can only do so much of computer models, you can only do so much of
satellites. You have to get on the ground....

CHRISTOPHER BULL, PHD STUDENT: One of the great appeals of an expedition
like this is that we get to see some oceanographic science out in the
real world. 'Cause our day-to-day jobs are using numerical models."...

"The expedition has been costed at US$1.5 million, which
includes the charter of an ice-strengthened ship to access these remote
locations. We
will shortly be announcing major corporate sponsorshipbut
the expedition is also looking for members of the public who wish to
take part in a public-funded scientific expedition south. Berths on
board are available for purchase."...

If you are interested in helping support the
Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014, please feel free to contact
us."...(near end of page)

There is no fixed timeline for the next
steps, said Turney, while the captains of the Shokalskiy, Aurora
Australis and the Xue Long waited for good weather. The forecast for the
next few days, however, looks like there will be more of the same:
snow, wind and heavy cloud.

"It's remarkable just how much change there's been," said
Turney. "The ice that's packed around us is many years old, some is more
than 10 years old."

The multi-year sea ice surrounding the
Shokalskiy is much thicker and stronger than the new, first-year sea ice
because it has had years of snowfall on top and freezing underneath.

According to the satellite maps, this ice was on the east side of the
Mertz glacier until this past week, stuck fast to the land. Possibly
because of a storm, or some other weather factor, this "fast ice" broke
off and was blown into the area in which the Shokalskiy was sailing.
Multi-year ice is a lot more difficult to cut through than single-year
ice, which was the sort of material the Shokalskiy came through on its
way into Antarctica....

The
fast ice was partly in the area because of the huge iceberg, B09B. This
broke away from the Antarctic continent in 2010, collided with and
snapped off the extended part of the Mertz glacier, and then grounded
itself in the entrance to Commonwealth Bay. Since then, the sea ice that
would normally have formed and blown out to seahas instead been
blocked by B09B and frozen into place. Given the recent
reorganisation of the ice around the Mertz glacier, glaciologists aboard
the Shokalskiy think the ship might have become inadvertently caught in
the formation of a new area of fast ice, which could stay in place for
several years.

"The SY Aurora anchored at
Commonwealth Bay in 1912. The expedition, using the ship SY Aurora
commanded by Captain John King Davis, departed from Hobart on 2 December
1911, landed at Cape Denison (named after Hugh Denison, a major backer
of the expedition) on Commonwealth Bay on 8 January 1912, and
established the Main Base.

[otherwise known as excess CO2 that exists only in China but for which the US taxpayer must pay in perpetuity, ed.],

"but here ice is building up.
We have found this has changed the system on many levels. The increase
in sea ice has freshened the seawater below, so much so that you can
almost drink it. This change will have impacts on the deep ocean
circulation.Underwater, forests of algae are dying as
sea-ice blocks the light. Who can say what effects the regional
circulation changes may have on the ice sheet of the Antarctic plateau,
or whether the low number of seals suggests changes to their population."

There has been no one prepared to publically put the alternativeperspective on climate change, to speak up and explain that of course
the climate has always changed, but there is no evidence to suggest we
currently have a climate catastrophe or that a carbon tax will have any
effect on the climate. Until yesterday. While I wouldn’t consider Ian
MacDonald’s speech to the Australian Senate particularly well written,
it is inspiring in so much as at last we have an Australian politician
speaking plainly in parliament about the nonsense that is climate change
and the carbon tax…

Senator IAN MACDONALD
(Queensland) (12:56): "There is a long list of speakers on the Clean
Energy Finance Corporation (Abolition) Bill 2013. I am one of the few
from the coalition who will be speaking. The Labor Party are quite
clearly filibustering on this and every other bill to cause as much
difficulty as possible to the Australian public. The Australian public
want this bill passed before Christmas.They made their views very, very
clear at the last federal election. The government is keen to honour
its commitment to the Australian people to abolish the carbon tax and
all the trappings that go with it, and that is why government speakers
will be noticeable by their absence from this debate.

We are, thanks to
the Labor Party and the Greens, dealing with each bill separately, and I
will not have the opportunity of speaking on any other bills, so my
remarks, as I indicated earlier, are in the broader way. I am also
keenly aware that we want to get on, so I will try to confine my
remarks. I have already spoken for about eight minutes.

Before concluding, I just want to emphasise this point: I think this
whole climate change debate will go down in history as one of the great
frauds on the Australian people—similar to Y2K, I would suggest. The
suggestion is that having the world’s biggest carbon tax, which will
reduce our emissions by five per cent—that is, five per cent of the 1.4
per cent of emissions that come from Australia—will change the climate
of the world. You have heard Senator Milne time and time again telling
us all that this climate change process in Australia is what is going to
save the world. She cannot possibly believe that. Nobody in their right
mind could possibly believe that.

I have always said the climate is changing. Clearly it is. Australia
used to be covered in ice once. The centre of Australia used to be a
rainforest. Clearly the climate is changing. Is it man’s emissions that
have done it? I do not know; I am not a scientist. But I say again that
there are a great number of reputable scientists who doubt it. I
acknowledge there are a great number of reputable scientists who are
absolutely passionate about the argument, but I might say I am not
convinced. But I do accept the climate is changing. But why Australia,
which emits less than 1.4 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions,
should be leading the way nobody has ever been able to explain to me.
Why Australia should have the world’s largest carbon tax when it is such
a small emitter again escapes me, and nobody, in any debate we have had
in this chamber, has ever been able to explain to me why it is that we
should destroy Australian industry, destroy Australian jobs, for no
benefit whatsoever.

As the report I was referring to when I last spoke on this says, it
is all pain for no environmental gain. It is clear that Australia acting
alone cannot change anything. We will do what Australia committed to
do—that is, reduce our emissions by five per cent. We will do it by the
direct action method. But I emphasise, even in relation to our programs,
that unless the rest of the world does something then it is not going
to make one iota of difference. I have heard all the statistics, but I
know the other statistics. China opens a coal fired power station every
week. India continues to use fossil fuel. I am not critical of them for
doing that. All I am saying is: why does Australia put itself at such a
commercial disadvantage for something that is not making one iota of
difference? The sooner we get rid of this authority and all the
trappings that go round the Labor-Green con job, if I might call it
that, of climate change, the better Australia will be.

"The Americans now refused to
purchase tea from England;they smuggled it from Holland.The English
then, by an ingenious trick, made their tea cheaper in America than it
was in England, or than that smuggled from Holland. They did this by
removing the duty always paid at an English port by the tea merchant on
his way from the Orient to America.But the colonists still refused to
buy the tea. The principle was at stake, -- the right of Parliament to
tax
them at all, -- and they were as determined as the English king.
Tea-laden ships reached Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston
late in the autumn of 1773. Excited meetings of citizens were held in
all these cities. In Charleston the tea was landed, only to rot in
storage; the Philadelphians refused to permit the ships to land.

Three ships lay in the harbor at Boston, but the people kept watch
day and night to prevent the landing of the tea. The owner of the
vessels was informed by the excited people that he must take back his
tea to London; but this he could not do, as the governor refused him
permission to sail and two of the king's ships guarded the harbor.
Meetings were held nightly in Faneuil Hall, or Old South Church, and at
length, on December 16, after every legal method for returning the tea
had been exhausted, a body of seven thousand men resolved that it should
not he landed; and half a hundred men, in the disguise of Mohawk
Indians, after giving a war whoop, ran silently to the harbor, boarded
the ships, broke open the tea chests, about three hundred and forty in
number, and threw the contents into the sea. The people looked on from
the shore, taking the proceedings as a matter of course.

Boston slept
that night as if nothing had happened. Who these fifty Indian-garbed
king-defiers were is not known; but it is known who instigated the mob,
who was the mouthpiece of Boston at this moment, and of Massachusetts,
of New England, of America -- it was Samuel Adams, the "Palinurus of the
Revolution."

These were soon
followed by the Quebec Act, which extended the province of Quebec to
include all the territory west of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio
River to the Mississippi -- except what had been granted by royal
charter. It is supposed that the act was intended to prevent pioneers
from settling in the Ohio country, and to win the favor of the French
Catholics.

Two years before these acts were passed (1772),
Massachusetts, led bySamuel Adams, had made an important move toward
concerted action."Committees of Correspondence" had been appointed in
every town in the colony for the purpose of guarding the interests of
liberty. The next year Virginia
suggested the forming of a permanent Committee of Correspondence to
extend to all the colonies.

This was gradually done, and the system was
very effective in spreading the doctrine of resistance.

Against the drastic British measures Massachusetts now made an appeal
for aid, and through these committees the people were prepared for an
immediate response. From Maine to Georgia they made common cause with their brethren of the Bay colony, and South Carolina
sounded the keynote in these ringing words, "The whole country must be
animated with one great soul, and all Americans must stand by one
another, even unto death." Washington offered to arm and equip a
thousand men at his own expense and to lead them to the relief of
Boston. Thomas Jefferson set forth the view in a pamphlet, the "Summary
View," that Parliament had no right to any authority whatever in the
colonies. Nearly all the colonies joined in an agreement of
non-intercourse with England. As the day approached for the Port Bill to
take effect, cattle, grain, and produce from the other colonies began
to pour into Boston. The day came, and throughout the country it was
generally kept as a day of fasting and prayer; the church bells were
tolled, and flags were put at half-mast on the ships in the harbors. Had
the English king
been able to glance over America on that day, he must have abandoned
every thought of punishing a single colony without having to deal with
them all; he must have seen that but two courses lay before him -- to
recede from his position, or to make war upon a continent."

-----------------------------------------

A distinguished scientist writes of his resignation from a scientific society over its support of global warming fraud:

"Below is the press release (on the web here) from the American Physical Society, responding to the resignation letter of APS fellow Dr. Hal Lewis made public last Friday,
October 8th. APS Members Dr. Roger Cohen, Dr. Will Happer, and of
course Dr. Hal Lewis have responded in kind, and have asked me to carry
their response on WUWT. I’ve gladly obliged, and their inline comments
are indented in blue italics in the document below. – Anthony

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather
than direct government actionagainst carbon dioxide....

In a little-noticed technical report, the U.S. Energy Information
Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that energy
related U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell
to about 1992 levels."....

Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that
is widely believed to contribute to global warming, have fallen 12%
between 2005 and 2012 and are at their lowest level since 1994,
according to a recent estimate by the Energy Information Administration,
the statistical arm of the U.S. Energy Department."....

Multi-billion dollar "spending decisions,paid for by consumers
and taxpayers...might not have been taken (at least to the same
degree or with the same haste)if global warming wasnot quite the
imminent threat it has been depicted....The recent standstill in global temperatures is a puzzle.Experts do not know why it is occurring or how long it will last....There is no consensus. Extensive peer-reviewed literature regards it as established
yet unexplained.It is widely accepted thatthe main climate models
which inform government policy did not predict it."...(subhead, "Reputable evidence")

Mr Farage, who has
led opposition to allowing open immigration from Romania and Bulgaria in
the new year, said refugees were "a very different thing". The UK government is refusing to accept Syrian refugees, saying it is better to offer financial help....

Some of them have spoken to the Associated Press, but want to remain anonymous for safety reasons. One Syrian refugee said, “Everyone sold whatever they owned in Syria
in order to get here, so that we could apply for visas at an embassy. We
were all surprised to be rejected on the basis that there was no reason
for us to go to Europe. Their reasons were all false – nothing correct
in them.”